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Monday, December 28, 2015

Stone Mattress by Margaret Atwood

Stone Mattress by Margaret Atwood
Collection of short stories, which purport to be “wicked” but often fall pretty far short. The first of these is the best and the remainder gradually slide downhill. Atwood herself-- or at least an elderly female Canadian writer of fiction—appears as central to most of these tales. And there’s a fair amount here that feels like it is revisiting the Toronto writers scene from the sixties. Are these the same people we met in The Robber Bride? I’m not sure, but there are similarities.

She’s a good writer, and the language is solid, some of the imagery neat. (Particularly in the first story of the collection.) But overall, her body of work is much, much stronger elsewhere, so this is probably only really interesting to the completionist.